[cc-licenses] Retracting masterial distributed under aCC 2.0 BY-NC-SA Licence.
James Grimmelmann
james at grimmelmann.net
Fri Dec 8 18:31:29 EST 2006
jonathon wrote:
> All:
>
> I received a very polite, informal, "cease and desist" letter.
>
> Basically, the sender wants all of my material that mentions a specific
> website to be removed from public distribution. I've removed the
> relevant material from my website.
>
> One of the points they want, is assurance that the material will
> not be redistributed by third parties.
>
> My understanding is that they are perfectly willing to go to court over
> this. The judge will issue a ruling in their favour. That judgement
> will, in theory, trump the CC licence. I don't see any point going to
> court, knowing that the best case scenario for me, is that I lose. A
> good faith effort, merely reduces the amount of damages can be awarded
> against me.
>
> All of the affected material was distributed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0
> license.
>
> I've gone thru that licence, and can't find a way to prevent further
> distribution of the offending material. Have I missed something?
The following is not legal advice . . .
In general no, a CC license is not revocable. You cannot revoke your
grant of permission to your licensees to distribute the material you
licensed to them. The sender of the C&D can't reasonably ask you to
stop the distribution because you probably have no power to stop it.
This is not to say, however, that the sender might not have the
ability/right to stop that distribution him- or her-self.
It would be useful to know on what basis the letter demands that this
material be removed. Is it a matter of copyright infringement, or
something else?
James
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